We consider the impact of the two recent economic crises, one that resulted from the great recession of 2007–2009 and one following the COVID-19 pandemic, on income inequality and the risk of poverty in Greece. To this end, we also investigate the key macroeconomic variables affecting the Greek income distribution. We find that alternative measures of inequality and relative poverty have deteriorated during the years of crises, implying that the country’s response to economic shocks has been particularly harmful for its more disadvantaged citizens. Regarding the variables affecting the income distribution, we show that income inequality and the risk of poverty increase with growth, implying that the benefits of growth, and burdens of recession, are distributed unequally among members of the Greek society. Moreover, inequality appears to increase with unemployment and decrease with the share of wages and salaries in total income. This finding highlights the importance of labour market regulations and workers’ welfare for attaining equality. Finally, we provide evidence that, during pre-election periods, income inequality is reduced, meaning that the political budget cycles, which are characteristic of the Greek economy, generate gains in terms of equality, but these gains are short-lived and mainly benefit the middle bracket of the income distribution.

Despite the wealth of micro–macro data on short-term demographic dynamics, the impact of metropolitan growth and economic downturns on local fertility is still under-investigated in advanced economies. Recent studies in low-fertility contexts have assumed suburban birth rates as being systematically higher than urban and rural rates. This assumption (hereafter, known as the ‘suburban fertility hypothesis’) was grounded on stylized facts and spatial regularities that imply a significant role of both macro (contextual) and micro (behavioral) factors positively influencing fertility in suburban locations. To verify such a hypothesis from a macro (contextual) perspective, the present study compares the general fertility rate of urban, suburban, and rural settlements of the Athens’ metropolitan region (Greece) at various observation years between 1860 and 2020. Long-term Athens’ growth represented a sort of ‘quasi-experiment’ for Mediterranean Europe, linking sequential urban stages and distinctive waves of economic expansion and recession. Using multivariate exploratory analysis and global/local econometric models, a dominant ‘rural’ fertility regime was recorded for 1860 and 1884. A characteristic ‘urban’ fertility regime was, instead, found over a relatively long, intermediate period between 1956 and 1990. Higher fertility in suburban settlements (10 km away from downtown Athens, on average) was, finally, observed since 2000. Considering a sufficiently long-time interval, the existence of multiple fertility regimes along the distance gradient has demonstrated how fertility dynamics are intrinsically bonded with metropolitan growth, economic downturns, and social transformations in Mediterranean Europe.

Building on the well-established relationship between economic dynamics and political processes, we focus on the most important element of the political process, namely, general (or national) elections, and look into their effects on public finance and total economic output. In this vein, the present study has three objectives: (i) to investigate political budget cycles in Greece during the period known as the ‘Third Hellenic Republic’ (in Greek, ‘Metapolitefsi’, hereafter THR) since 1974; (ii) to assess whether national elections affect total economic activity in a stabilizing or destabilizing way; and (iii) to examine the possible effects of the external sector of the economy on the budget balance. The empirical findings of our analysis document how the Greek economy was characterized by sharp political budget cycles in correspondence with the THR, exerting a destabilizing effect on the total output of the economy. Performances of the external sector of the economy have significantly affected budget balances in Greece.